


As Comes the Snow

by dogpoet



Category: Wallander (UK TV), Wallander - All Media Types, Wallander Series - Henning Mankell
Genre: Before the Frost, Episode Related, Fairy Tales, Family, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Swedish fairytales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-17
Updated: 2012-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-16 12:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/539581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dogpoet/pseuds/dogpoet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Linda took after him in her dogged determination to get answers. He used the trait to solve crimes. She used it for more personal matters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Comes the Snow

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by [northern](http://archiveofourown.org/users/northern) and [ariadnes_string](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string).
> 
> Set towards the end of “Before the Frost.” Includes spoilers for that episode and previous episodes. I have also drawn on book canon.

Kurt was woken by a strange pain in his chest. He lay there, breathing, trying not to panic. Stress, the doctor had said the last time this had happened. Not a heart attack. Afraid to move, Kurt stared into the darkness of his bedroom. Linda would be furious with him if it was a heart attack and he didn’t call out to her, but he remained quiet.

Ten minutes later, the pain dissipated. 

Carefully, Kurt brought his arms out from under the duvet, waking Jussi, whose tail thumped happily. The air in the bedroom was cold. The forecast had predicted frost, but no snow. Not yet. 

Kurt put on his slippers and padded to the window to look out. Snuffling, Jussi followed. Everything outside was silent and still, the sky pale with clouds. It looked as though it might snow. What did forecasters know? Kurt stood for a minute, filing everything in his memory, as he always did.

Beside him, Jussi whimpered, wanting to go out. “Yes, okay,” Kurt said, eyeing the clock. It was 5:30. There was no sense in going back to sleep.

*

Linda appeared, sleepy, squinting in the light of the kitchen, just as Kurt was pouring a cup of coffee.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She shook her head, yawning, then sat in one of the chairs at the kitchen table. She reached out automatically to pet Jussi, who had wagged over to her and laid his head on her leg. “You didn’t. Are you working today?”

“Reports,” Kurt said. “Nothing urgent.” There was a moment of silence. “Shall I take you to the train station?” 

“I think you should take the day off, and we can go up to Krageholm Lake with Jussi.”

“Krageholm Lake?”

“Would you prefer Marebo?”

Sitting across from Linda, Kurt conceded the point. The trails had been opened up again, but the case was too fresh in his mind, and he didn’t want to visit there.

“You don’t get enough exercise.”

Kurt opened his mouth to protest.

“You don’t!”

“I walk Smellyface, here, every day! I’ve lost two kilos!”

“Dad,” Linda said with a lecturing look on her face.

“What?”

Three hours later, in the dim, winter morning light, they were walking along one of the paths curving through the woods on the north side of Krageholm Lake. Kurt had let Jussi off his leash, and he zig-zagged away and back again, nose focussed.

At the start of the case, when Anna had come to the house, the leaves had been on the trees. Now they covered the ground. But the woods were still thick with bulky pines and spruces looming against the grey sky.

There was definitely a smell of snow in the air. Kurt was becoming like those old men who claimed to feel the weather in their bones.

Soon he would be a grandfather. A small part of him would be born just as the rest of him was dying.

Linda was bundled up in her coat and scarf, her gloved hands in her pockets. The golden-brown strands of her hair were half anchored by the scarf, half flyaway in the cold air. Winter hid her scar, the thin white line on her neck. 

When Linda had been small, she’d loved the fairytale about Linda-Gold and the old king who never let anyone touch him. She’d liked to mimic the little girl in the story, patting Kurt’s cheek with her warm hand. _Now you!_ , she had always demanded, and he had patted her cheek, smiling, saying, _There you go, my Linda-Gold._

Over and over again. She never tired of it. Until she outgrew it.

The lake, when they reached it, looked cold and lonely, darker than the sky, divided from it by the line of trees.

They had walked most of the way in silence, but suddenly Linda said, “Dad?”

“Yeah?” He could see she had something on her mind. She took after him in her dogged determination to get answers. He used the trait to solve crimes. She used it for more personal matters.

“You said we could talk about it.”

“Talk about what?” But he knew the answer.

“Whether you had an affair with Anna’s mum.”

Kurt considered admitting to an affair he’d never had. It seemed simpler.

“Well?” Linda stared at him, waiting.

“No. No, I didn’t.” It was perfect in his mind because it had never happened. Monica was perfect. He remembered her voice, the way she’d looked at him. Their desire had been palpable. Kurt had thought about her more than he should. He’d thought about how it would be to fuck her, this woman his wife _knew_. There was an element of danger to it that had excited him at the time.

“Mum says you did.”

“That’s her prerogative.” He’d cheated in his mind. Perhaps that was the same as the physical act.

Linda’s chin jutted out in frustration. “God! You are so —”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me what happened!”

“Nothing happened!” He could see Linda didn’t believe him.

“Nothing happened?”

“No.”

Silence.

“I may have been… in love with her. For a short while,” Kurt admitted. “I would say we both considered it.” He hoped the answer would put an end to her questions.

They walked in silence again. The only sound was Jussi crashing through twigs and leaves.

“But Mum had an affair?”

Kurt glanced at her.

“It was the way you said it. You said —” Linda looked away. “I don’t know. I hate when the two of you keep things from me.”

“Yes. She had an affair, but if you want to know more about that, you’ll have to ask her.” Tears came suddenly to his eyes, and his throat tightened up. The circumstances leading to Inga’s affair flooded his mind.

He still had the Polaroid. Throwing it away wouldn’t have appeased Inga. He suddenly wished he had the picture with him. He could have explained without words. He realised he desperately wanted Linda to know. The line of scar near his heart bound him to her. They both knew how it felt to be cut open, to bleed, to come close to dying.

Maybe that was the only thing they understood about one another.

“Do you remember my friend Sten Widén?” Kurt asked after a while.

“The one with the horses?” 

“We grew up together in Malmö. Did you know, before I joined the police, I was planning to be Sten’s manager? He was a singer. He had a lovely voice back then, but he’s gone rusty now.”

“And Mum had an affair with him?”

The irony made Kurt’s mouth twist in a crooked smile. “No. She found a picture we’d taken of ourselves. You know, holding the camera like this.” He extended his arm. “We were about seventeen, I think.”

Before Sten had become an alcoholic with eczema, before he’d become a horse trainer who slept with all his stable girls, he’d been a beautiful boy with unruly brown hair and pink cheeks, quick with a smile. And his voice had made Kurt’s heart stop.

Kurt could feel Linda putting the pieces together in her head. 

“One picture doesn’t make someone have an affair.” Linda didn’t look shocked. Just thoughtful. “Did she think you were still…?”

Kurt didn’t answer. He didn’t know. Inga had had plenty to say about his drinking and his erratic hours and his absence, but on the topic of Sten, she had been silent. At the very least, she’d felt it was proof he’d lie to her.

Something fuzzy floated into Kurt’s vision. He looked up, stopping in his tracks. It was snowing. A tiny flurry.

“They said it wouldn’t,” Linda said, stopping beside Kurt.

“It won’t stay. I hope it doesn’t stay.” Kurt hated the snow. He hated it with a passion he couldn’t explain.

The picture had been taken in winter, at Ribban, when the beach was deserted. Still, kissing there in public had made Kurt’s heart thud in fear and excitement. They had taken two pictures, one for each of them. They had stood there in rare winter sun, fanning the Polaroids until they developed. Now Kurt’s copy was faded, distorted with age. Kurt wondered if Sten still had his.

“It’s not such a big deal,” Linda said as they took up walking again.

“It was then. Sten thought his parents suspected something. We had to stop.”

Linda brought one hand out of her pocket and linked her arm with his. “You’re still friends.”

Jussi trotted up to them, a giant log clutched in his jaws. Kurt grabbed one end of it, wrestling with him, but he wouldn’t let go. 

“It’s not what it was,” Kurt said, giving up and letting Jussi run off again. “Neither of us, we’re not what we were.”

*

Next morning, Kurt made coffee for himself, strange tea for Linda. She emerged from the guest bedroom fully dressed, carrying her suitcase. She set it down beside the kitchen table and joined him by the stove. He turned to give her a hug, pulling her close, fiercely.

“Don’t leave me, Linda-Gold,” he said, his voice rough and unused. He felt tears coming again. Loneliness descended upon him.

“Dad.” Linda drew back. She smiled and patted his cheek. “You’ll be all right. I’ll be back soon.”

Old rituals were comforting. He placed his palm against her cheek, then pulled himself together. He handed her her tea.

“You ought to give internet dating another go,” she said.

He hoped his expression communicated what he thought of the idea.

“They let you put either gender now for who you want to date.”

Kurt lifted his hands to stop her saying more. “Enough. I’m happy being a lonely old king in my castle.”

Maybe his chest hurt from memory — the old scar, the knife wound from the early days of policing — and his heart longed to return to the days before the injury, before the rupture had made him afraid to let anyone touch him.

Linda picked up her cup of tea. “Have you still got the picture? The one mum found.”

He’d never shown it to anyone. It had lived between the pages of an old book from his childhood, a place he’d thought Inga would never look. After she’d found it, he’d hidden the picture in a different book. 

Kurt found the book on a shelf in the living room, and the pages opened to the photograph. The chemicals in the Polaroid had decayed the picture, fading the colours and marking his and Sten’s faces with blotches. 

Linda came to stand beside him. “Look at you,” she said, taking the photograph. “You look happy.”

He had been. Sometimes he still was.

_the end_

**Author's Note:**

> The fairytale Wallander recalls is called "Linda-Gold and the Old King" by Anna Wahlenberg.


End file.
